The invention is in the general field of travel reservation and ticketing system such as the airline reservation systems used by airline ticket agents and by travel agents as well as to a certain extent by individuals through databank services such as the Dow Jones or Dialog services. Examples of such reservation systems are known under the trade names Apollo (United Airlines) and Sabre, and early versions of some are believed to have been in use since at least the 1960's. Other examples are systems which are designed for use primarily on or through personal computers. Examples are known under the trade names ELECTRONIC OAG, EAASY SABRE, CORPORATE APOLLO, COMMERCIAL PARS, LIFECO REZPLUS (uncertain if usable with a standard PC), SYSTEM ONE C SERIES and AIRPLAN. The systems which are for use on or through a personal computer typically connect to a larger system, such as Apollo, through a communication device to use information therefrom and to book flights and make other travel arrangements.
The known prior art systems are believed to suffer from a number of limitations which have come into particular focus since airline deregulation brought about an unprecedented increase in the options available to the traveller and in the daily changes in flight fares, restrictions, etc. For example, it is believed that well in excess of one hundred thousand separate fare changes are made and published every day, and this only for flights in the United States. Only some of those fares are reflected in the known prior art systems. According to one estimate, when a travel arranger requests the lowest fare itinerary about a fifth of the fares accessed from the Apollo system are accompanied by a message "Need rules validation," indicating that the fare shown on the screen is subject to restrictions or changes not checked automatically. The travel arranger must then display the rules in English and decide if the fare is valid. If it is not, there is no provision for automatically finding the next higher fare and the travel arranger must display the fares and the rules for each fare, or look at the most recent rulebook available at the time (such as the biweekly ATPCO Passenger Tariff Set, which is the size of a big-city telephone book) and hope that the information there still holds or, as is more typical, telephone the airline or airlines in charge of the flight or flights of interest to check each flight (and hope that the airline employee has accurate information). The problem is multiplied when the travel arranger seeks to investigate several possible itineraries and the trade-offs between them, such as the typical trade-offs between the cost of the travel in terms of ticket price and in terms of travel time and convenience. Of course, this can impose on the travel arranger the conflicting requirements of finding the best value for a particular itinerary while at the same time minimizing the time it takes to arrange a particular trip, and one of these requirements may win at the expense of the other when the known prior art systems are used.
In contrast, in the invention described and claimed here the travel arranger only need to enter a trip request, and the system responds by fully automatically and rapidly finding the least costly but still valid itineraries in terms of a preset policy, individualized for the particular traveller, regarding acceptable or desirable price tradeoffs between cost on the one hand and time and convenience on the other. There can be an individualized policy stored in the invented system for each traveller or, more typically for each group of travellers who share some common characteristic (e.g., employed at a similar level in the same company), and a travel policy can be tiered, to automatically accommodate the various levels of employees who may travel or for the kind of travel for an individual or a group. For example, a team of engineers going to a customer's site to service equipment on emergency basis could be expected to travel via priority transportation, with as little delay as possible, even if it means paying more. But a team of accountants travelling to a subsidiary for a regular quarterly audit could agree to travel via connecting flights, Spending a little more time on travel but less money. Different considerations also can apply when an individual travels on business and when the same person travels for other reasons. It is difficult, if not impractical, to optimize the itinerary for the particular needs of the traveler using the known prior art systems, but this can be done particularly conveniently and rapidly using the invented system.
For example, while the known prior art systems such as Apollo can usually find the lowest fare on a given flight, it is believed that only the invented system can automatically find not only this but also the flight or flights with the lowest fare for a specified itinerary. It is believed that only the invented system can automatically, without taking up the valuable time of the travel arranger, take into account details of a preset corporate travel policy, as well as of individual preferences, such as the trade-off between ticket price and travel time (e.g., a customer's travel policy can specify that only nonstop flights should be used if available, or that stops are allowed but only when-the fare is at least $25 less than for a nonstop flight, or that connecting flights are allowed but only if the added trip time is less than 2 hours and the fare is at least $120 less than for a nonstop flight, etc.), trade-offs between ticket price and trip timing (e.g., trips with a departure time after 6 P.M. are allowed but only if the fare saving is over $ 150, etc.), trade-offs between airports serving the same city (e.g., Newark airport can be used in preference to LaGuardia but only if the fare saving is over $25, etc), tradeoffs between ticket price and comfort (e.g., first class can be used when the trip is over 1500 miles, etc.), trade-offs between ticket price and the needs of a particular trip (e.g., an override code that a particular trip must use the fastest way, or must use only a nonstop flight, etc.), as well as other trade-offs and customer preferences.
As compared with known airline reservation systems which can be used on or through a personal computer or a special terminal, the invented system is believed to have significant advantages which include the ability to automatically find not only the lowest fare on a given flight but also the unprecedented ability to automatically find the flight or itinerary with the lowest fare, the ability to automatically take into account in this process the details of a preset, comprehensive corporate travel policy as well as preset details of personal travel preferences, the ability to show flight, fare and seat availability on the same screen and the ability to print itineraries and tickets at the location of the travel arranger, even an individual accessing the system through a modem from a personal computer.
In a exemplary and nonlimiting embodiment, the invented airline reservation system automatically selects least-cost, valid trip itineraries which conform to preset, individualized travel policies, by using a processor with access to a tariff file and a traveler file and a rule file and with access to one or more airline booking systems (such as Apollo) for seat availability and for booking. The processor can be accessed from personal computers and terminals connected to it directly (e.g., by a cable or a dedicated line) or through a communication device such a modem using the telephone system under the control of a suitable communication software. The tariff file in the processor contains, in machine-readable form: airline schedules which can be obtained from a source such as the ABC Guides; routings and footnotes which can be obtained from a source such as the Airline Tariff Publishing Co. (ATPCO); legal connecting times which can be obtained from industry sources; and fares, which can be obtained from ATPCO. As an example of the kind of information available from ATPCO, see ISSUE 321, May 20, 1987, of the ATPCO PASSENGER TARIFF SET, which is hereby incorporated by reference in this specification. This tariff file, as stored in a processor operating in accordance with the invention is typically updated daily to reflect the daily fare changes which typically number in the hundreds of thousands, and similarly frequent and extensive changes typically are made in the rules file as well. The traveler file contains, also in machine-readable form, information such as a set of corporate travel policies and personal profiles of individual travellers (such as credit card numbers, frequent traveller numbers, seating and other travel preferences, which corporate travel policy applies to that individual, etc.). For example, a corporate travel policy can identify a corporate customer and can be tiered to specify the respective travel policy for each of several groups of employees (e.g., high management, middle management and other employees) and, if desired, for individuals as well. Each travel policy sets forth rules which define the trade-offs between cost and the traveler's time and convenience and personal travel preferences as well. The rules file contains in machine-readable form the rules governing the use of particular fares for particular flights or itineraries, specifying, for example, that a particular fare may be used only on weekend flights. These rules are supplied, in English, by sources such as ATPCO; however this information is reformatted in accordance with the invention in a novel manner which allows the invented process to be carried out fully automatically and to carry out procedures and obtain results which the known airline reservation systems cannot. The known airline reservation systems do not store all of the rules information and thus cannot automatically ensure automatic validation of fares, flights, etc., and are unable to efficiently apply the incomplete rules information which they do store to more than one flight or itinerary at a time. The invented system reformats the rules (e.g. those supplied by ATPCO) such that they can be used fully automatically by the invented process, in a fast and efficient procedure which does not require human intervention to find one or more of the best itineraries for a trip request which both have the lowest valid fares according to these rules and meet a policy as to the trade-off between fare and convenience. While the rules file could be considered as a part of the tariff file, it is shown and described here as a separate file because it is formatted in a fundamentally different manner from the rest of the information in the tariff file and because it is used in a fundamentally different way in accordance with the invention. The travel arranger can be an airline ticket or reservation agent, a travel agent or an individual traveler who uses an entry device such as a personal computer or a computer terminal to enter travel parameters identifying a customer (and therefore a travel policy) and a trip (e.g., a departure and arrival location and a departure and/or arrival time window) and, if desired, any override requests, such as that only nonstop flights can be used on this trip (although the policy specifies that connecting flights are generally allowed). The exemplary system also includes a communication device for communicating with one or more airline booking systems (such as Apollo) which can provide information on seat availability on specified flights per booking class and can allow those flights to be booked. The processor which forms a part of this exemplary embodiment of the invented system responds to the travel parameters entered by the travel arranger to machine-interrogate the tariff file in accordance with these parameters and the relevant contents of the rules file and to rapidly sift through what may be thousands of currently available flights, fares and rules for a given trip and to find the lowest fare for which the particular traveler and trip qualify and for which seats are available, automatically communicating as needed with the airline booking system. In particular, the processor uses the tariff file to automatically find all appropriate flights and itineraries for the trip time window and departure and arrival locations, automatically communicates with the airline reservation system (e.g., Apollo) to check seat availability on these flights, uses the tariff file to find the lowest fares for the itineraries for which seats are available, using the particular customer's travel policy and other traveller file information to apply that customer's travel constraints and trip parameter trade-offs to these possible itineraries and thereby select the least-cost itinerary which still conforms to that customer's travel policy and any overrides (and, if desired, selects one or more next-best itineraries to give the customer a choice), and then books the selected itinerary and arranges for ticket issuance.
Various aspects of features of an earlier development are discussed in two articles in the travel trade press, which are hereby incorporated by reference in this specification: (1) Goodwin, N., Agency Dares to Launch Its Own Air Res System, TRAVEL WEEKLY, Oct. 23, 1986, and (2) Goodwin, N., Agency, Funded by 3M, Set to Market Software, BUSINESS TRAVEL, Oct. 13, 1986.